★★½
“Firing mostly blanks.”
I’m not normally a stickler for accuracy in movies. My disbelief gets suspended so easily, there’s a hook for it beside the TV set. But I have to say, this provided a parade of occasions where it didn’t exactly feel like the characters were elite snipers. Indeed, at points, it seemed like this was the first time certain actors had held a gun, since they were pretending to be soldiers in the school playground, with a stick. In particular, they appear woefully unaware of the idea of concealment. I was painfully reminded of the Monty Python sketch, “How Not to be Seen”. Also, if you’re going to call in your old military pals, I’d go with a range of skills, not just snipers.
That’s probably just me though, and is getting ahead of ourselves here. This unfolds in the Australian outback where former soldier Chris Hendrix (Mitchell, sporting her natural Aussie accent, which confused the heck out of my wife) is living the quiet life with her teenage daughter, Anja (Wolfe). Dad isn’t in the picture. Naturally, the quiet life doesn’t last, with her past catching up with her, in no uncertain fashion, and in the shape of a grudge-bearing former colleague known as The Dragon (Roth). So she sends up a call for help, and her old buddies show up, only to start getting picked off rather quickly. Maybe leaving their heads above the window-sill isn’t exactly the best survival tactic.
All this comes as quite a surprise to Anja, who just wants to bunk off school and hang with her boyfriend. Needless to say, The Dragon has other ideas. I quite liked the set-up here, with the relationship between Chris and her daughter credibly spiky. However, once the snipers show up, the film largely grinds to a halt, losing all momentum. It doesn’t help that, of all the forms of combat, sniping might be the least cinematic. One second you’re there, the next, your head explodes in a cloud of red mist. Kinda dull, really. Of course, we learn the “shocking” truth about Anja’s absent father, which should be absolutely no surprise, providing you have seen any films in the Star Wars universe, shall we say.
That the movie thinks this is a twist gives you some idea of the low ambitions here. It would have been more entertaining had the seven snipers turned up on the side of The Dragon, and Chris has to figure out how to defeat them. I mean, she does calmly tell her daughter about her 116 kills, a number at which Lyudmila Pavlichenko would nod approvingly,. Perhaps Chris could have used the help of Anje, whose archery skills are showcased early, only subsequently not reaching the level of importance I expected. Instead, things proceed to the highly predictable face-off between Chris and The Dragon. All that’s lacking is any particular reason to care much. Nicely shot, making effective use of the locations, yet underwhelming almost everywhere else.
Dir: Sandra Sciberras
Star: Radha Mitchell, Tim Roth, Annabel Wolfe, Ioan Gruffudd